KOAN Sound & Asa – Sanctuary EP

Barbarix was telling me last night that he purchased Asa’s old mac from him to start doing music again and that’s one of the best things I’ve heard this year because Barbarix has taken a few years out of music due to personal shit but the boy is gonna come back bigger than ever.

He told me about this too and I ‘m glad he did because I have deliberately avoided checking out Dubstep-ish tunes for a while after America killed it but this sounds glorious. Not really dubstep but more electronica but nevertheless pretty beautiful & awesome. Plus I’m a sucka for STRINGS!

KOAN Sound were one of SPIN’s favorite surprises at this year’s Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. The Bristol duo cut their wubs with old-school breakbeat funk, rap-addled glitch, and Warp-style weirdness — it’s no wonder Skrillex snatched them up for his OWSLA imprint. Now Will Weeks and Jim Bastow expand their sound further by linking with their neighbor, the ethereally minded producer Asa, for an EP whose titular track can be experienced above.

On “Sanctuary,” live strings and drums help set an expansive aural scene — a light-dappled sound that merges the organically orchestral with the electronically epic. And the beautiful animation that comes with only enhances those feelings — nature versus technology, night melding into day, broad vistas marked by unusual details created by Dan Hoang and John Weeks.

Sanctuary is out on October 22 via Inspected and OWSLA and features five previously unheard songs, one of which most definitely pays loving tribute to Akira. It can be preordered here.